Tag Archives: GBPEUR

The euro was introduced as an accounting currency on 1 January 1999, replacing the former European Currency Unit (ECU) at a ratio of 1:1. On 1 January 2002, physical euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation.

The following chart plots the GBPEUR exchange rate from 1975. (NB. The GBPEUR rate has been back-calculated to 1975.)

The month closing high for the rate was 1.9234 in January 1981; and the month closing low was 1.0341 in December 2008.

Monthly seasonality

The following charts look at the monthly fluctuations in GBPEUR.

The chart below shows the average monthly returns for GBPEUR for the period 1975-2014. For example, on average the rate has risen 0.80% in January.

From the above chart it can be seen that since 1975 the strongest month for GBPEUR has been January, followed by April and July. Whereas the weakest month has been September (-1.05%), followed by February and December.

To see if there has been any change to this monthly seasonality since 1999 (i.e. since the euro was introduced as an accounting currency), the following chart plots the average monthly rate changes in GBPEUR for the period 1999-2014.

For this shorter period, it can be seen that January (+1.20%) is still the strongest month followed by, still, April and July (although April has been stronger and July weaker since 1999). On the other side, December (-1.25%) has become the weakest month (September has had close to a zero average change since 1999), with the other week months being November and February.

The following chart plots the proportion of positive returns for GBPEUR for each of the 12 months.

The observations here largely correlate with those for the average changes. Namely, since 1999-

The two strongest months for GBPEUR have been: January and April,

The three weakest months for GBP have been: February, November, December.